Was Trump's strike all about North Korea?

Trump's missile strike hasn't made a lot of sense as something directed at Russia or Syria, minimally damaging as it was. Or as a message worth the blowback, to placate the neocons - they'll never be satisfied until we've annihilated ourselves.

So here's another interpretation, from Ilargi:

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/04/symbols-of-strength/

There’s another element in all this that deserves more scrutiny. Sort of linked to the Putin-Assad connection. That is, why was the attack launched at the very moment that Xi Jinping was sitting down for dinner at Mar-a-Lago? Trump had reason to show the world that he’s willing to use his strength. You can question the whole thing, but it makes sense, from a military point of view, in more than one way.

And the biggest threat to the US, and perhaps the world, is not Assad. It’s North Korea. The US had to tell China that its protégé is getting out of hand. That has been going on for a while of course, but Kim fired a bunch of rockets recently, and one of these days that could lead to a -nuclear?- ‘accident’. Countries like South Korea and Japan are getting very nervous, and the US has vowed to protect them. As Xi is well aware.

Who was the "message" primarily aimed at?

So the symbolism here may be directed, in a pretty direct way, at Xi Jinping. Get your boy under control or we soon will have no choice but to do it for you. And we don’t want to do that, because you will lose face if we do, and if that happens the two of us may get into a conflict, on opposite sides. Which neither of us should want. It would be bad for business. And while you’re here to discuss business, let’s get this out of the way first.

Actually pretty slick, if saving face for Xi was a concern in this. Another look at this, discussing signaling as opposed to communication, is at:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-10/medias-missing-point-syria-empi...

It seems many media observers are confused by events in Syria and the swirl of competing narratives. Did the Swamp drain Trump? Did the Neocons succeed in forcing Trump to follow their lead? Is the U.S. ramping up yet another endless war?

Consider the possibility that none of these narratives actually get to the heart of what's going on. To make sense of all this, we're going to have to delve into topics far below today's headlines.

Hugh-Smith thinks that the strike was minimally about Syria (in line with its minimal damage), and mainly about telling Xi that he was willing to use force.

In other words, the perception of power and the willingness and ability to apply force is what matters in terms of political influence. If we look through this lens, we discern a much different picture of what may be going on with the cruise missile attack on Syria.

Of course, now Trump has to deal with Putin's anger - unless Putin also read it this way and is responding in equivalent signaling terms.

What do you think?

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich

I've seen reports that they already have two satellites that go over the U.S., and if one of them set off an EMP pulse over us, we'd be back in the Dark Ages. Don't know about you, but I don't have a bunker.

I don't know what's going on, of course, but let's not give up hope yet (while we prepare for the worst, I guess).

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@Sunspots The North Koreans do not have hydrogen bombs. They are beginning to boost fission bombs with hydrogen components that increase yield a bit. You cannot get that kind of EMP with a fission explosion.

Also, it isn't that difficult to harden critical infrastructure against EMP blasts. Good old fashioned vacuum tubes are orders of magnitude more resistant to EMP than integrated circuits. When US intelligence learned the Russian Foxbat fighter had miniaturized vacuum tubes they were convinced it was designed to fight in a nuclear environment. It turned out they couldn't build the integrated circuits back then.

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@FuturePassed

Or even maintaining our critical or other infrastructure, are we? Essentially no Civil Defense these days as we get more aggressive. From what I read, even hackers could take out our electrical grids, and some of the critical components of them aren't manufactured here - we're dependent on China and other Asian countries for them, and on Russia for raw materials.

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@Sunspots you don't need to worry about a North Korean Satellite, at least in the immediate future.

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Big Al's picture

not North Korea.

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@Big Al

But maybe they'd come next after us, or in combination with us? Empires all collapse, and the US is one; I think all we can hope for is that some of the biosphere survives, and maybe a few people living bearablely. We haven't evolved enough to keep up sustainably with either our population or our technology.

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